Happy Tail: No fenced-in yard required!

Kandice Mickunas of Toledo, OH, wanted a dog. A college student now living in an apartment, she missed the dogs she’d had while living at home. She began searching on Petfinder and made a list of ones she wanted to meet.

“On the list was a corgi-mix named Tippy,” Kandice says. “She was a good size; she sounded like she would be a good fit.” But Kandice really had her eye on a dog at another shelter.

But she stopped by Toledo Animal Shelter to meet Tippy first, and as it turned out, she fell for Tippy immediately. “She was fast. She loved to run. She loved to chase tennis balls, and she loved to play in the kiddie pool they had in the yard.”

But what really sold Kandice was that Tippy “was a total dork,” as she
puts it. “How did I know this? Well, what else would you call a dog that
stuck her head under the water and ran laps around the inside of the
pool? And I loved that about her because I’m a dork, too.”

There
was only one problem: The shelter preferred that Tippy go to a home with
a fenced yard because of her energy level. Kandice was heartbroken but
decided to plead her case. She explained that she liked to go for walks
and was planning on taking Tippy for multiple walks a day. In addition,
she told them that she had “two roommates who are equally active and
excited about owning a dog, that I’ve had experience with high-energy
rescue dogs before (we trained our pointer mix, Maggie, to catch a
Frisbee) and that I really believed Tippy was the dog for me.”

The
shelter compromised, letting Kandice take Tippy on a trial basis,
asking her to call in every day to report on how it was going.

Kandice
made her daily reports and things went well. In her new home, Tippy got
lots of exercise and attention, so the adoption was finalized.
“Adopting Tippy was one of the best decisions of my life,” Kandice says,
“and I’m glad I have a new best friend who’s just as big of a dork as I
am.”